Computing has become an integral component in our daily lives—so much so, that it is nearly impossible to imagine not interfacing with some form of computing device in a given day. The proliferation of computing has helped spawn the development of extremely effective and pervasive communication technologies, such as local area networks, wide area networks, intranets, and the Internet. These communication technologies, much like computing, have become ingrained in our lives, as new industries and markets have sprung into existence to provide services and products using these communication technologies. As more consumers incorporated these communication technologies into their personal or business practices, more service providers have been created to provide the needed communications support. Today, a significant amount of information is being deployed through these communication technologies. The dissemination of the information over these networks is limited by several constraints—chiefly, connectivity, that is, the manner at which information is distributed from a content provider to participating end users. As such, connectivity has become paramount to consumers. Coupled to connectivity, the speed at which the information may be accessed is an important factor that is considered by consumers when choosing a communications service provider.
Service providers have addressed the need for reliable and fast connectivity by developing new protocols that transfer data quickly and efficiently over existing public communication networks. For example, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) and transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) are two protocols support the efficient transfer of significant amounts of data. Utilizing these protocols, new services, such as digital subscriber line (DSL) and asynchronous digital subscriber line (ADSL) were developed offering participating users fast connectivity rates and integrated services. DSL and ADSL service providers exploit traditional public networks (for example, telephone networks) by creating three distinct channels over a single twisted pair wire connecting a subscriber to the public network. These channels include a transmitting channel to transmit non-voice data, a receiving channel to receive non-voice data, and a voice channel to transmit and receive voice data. A primary benefit of these services is that they are deployed on existing public networks. By using existing public networks, new communications networks and costly equipment are not needed.
Although averting costs and the expenditure of resources by using existing public networks, DSL and ADSL service providers face many challenges in implementing this service on existing public networks. Among these challenges is the provisioning of ADSL network resources for each subscriber. Provisioning is a process that yields an end-to-end permanent virtual circuit (PVC) between the subscriber and the Internet Service Provider (ISP)/Network Service Provider (NSP). Included in the provisioning process is the configuration of various ADSL network hardware to enable the ADSL network to recognize and service participating users. In operation, ADSL network hardware employ various configuration variables when creating PVCs. These configuration variables include the Virtual Path Identifier (VPI) and the Virtual Circuit Identifier (VCI). The VPI and VCI variables are integers that, when used in combination, provide unique identifiers for each PVC and, correspondingly, for each subscriber. Generally, the assignment of values for the VPI and VCI variables is performed randomly by the provisioning process (for example, provisioning software). As such, it is very difficult to arbitrarily determine any VCI value or any VPI value once assigned.
Even with the most advanced provisioning procedures, there exist great inefficiencies. For example, the random generation and assignment of ADSL network configuration variables causes several problems. In the case of a “hung” PVC (that is, the situation where the provisioning system fails during provisioning and it cannot recover the original state leaving a partial connection hanging in the system), already assigned VPI values and VCI values are “locked-out” until they are reset manually. Such scenario results in less than optimal use of available provisioning resources. Alternatively, where the provisioning system cancels the provisioning for a given subscriber in midstream and decides to reinstate the provisioning process for that same subscriber (for example, a situation where a subscriber decides to order ADSL services but changes his/her mind, and then subsequently re-subscribes to ADSL services), the ADSL network operator is left to manually search the logs of the provisioning system to determine which VCI and VPI values were originally assigned to the subscriber. Such process is extremely inefficient and draws upon valuable resources that could otherwise be better utilized.
From the foregoing it is appreciated that there exists a need for systems and methods that provide deterministic configuration variables to better manage and optimize resources of hung provisioning processes. Such a system and method has not been realized in the prior art.